ACT Study Guide/English

For the English section, you are given 45 minutes to read five selections and then answer a total of 75 multiple-choice questions about them. This gives you an average of nine minutes per passage and 15 questions. These questions are broken down into two subcategories. The first subcategory usage and mechanics. This covers punctuation, grammar, etc. The second subcategory is rhetorical skills, which covers the areas of sentence order, style, etc. There are 40 usage and mechanics questions and 35 rhetorical skills questions. Spelling and vocabulary are not tested directly, but there are some questions that ask you to figure words out by the context. Obviously, these questions are a lot easier if you already know the word ahead of time, but you don't have to. After you read the passage, you can go back and re-read it as you answer the questions.

One tip that deals specifically with the English section is that after you choose your answer, read through the sentence or paragraph with your answer choice and see if it sounds good. If it does, you know you've made the right choice.

These questions always refer back to an underlined sentence, phrase, or word. Most of the u/m questions that you see will have an answer choice of NO CHANGE. If you pick that answer, it means that you think the sentence or phrase is fine as written. You will also be given three other choices.

e.g. Snuggled in the basement with my family, the hurricane was stronger than ever. This makes it sound like the hurricane is in the basement with your family. Instead, you could rewrite it as "I was snuggled in the basement with my family. The hurricane outside was stronger than ever."